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Today in History: August 15, Woodstock music festival begins

inquirer.com · 2h · first reportShare

Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2026. There are 138 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a watershed event in American music and culture. Also on this date: In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had killed 17 years earlier. In 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened as the SS Ancon crossed the just-completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory. In 1947, India gained independence after nearly 200 years of British rule. In 1961, as workers began constructing a Berlin Wall made of concrete, East German soldier Conrad Schumann leapt to freedom over a tangle of barbed wire. In 1989, F.W. de Klerk was sw